Conqueror

Arngrim screamed his name. 'Egil!'

The Dane turned. But then the current of the battle separated them, and Arngrim had to deal with the next young man who threw himself at him, sword flashing, eager to die, and then with the next, and the next.

XVI

In the King's camp, priests prayed and women waited nervously.

This Monday in May was peaceful. The sun was warm on Cynewulf's face. In the churned-up mud of the camp's floor green grass shoots struggled to find air and light amid the prints of feet and hooves.

He could hear nothing of the battle. Somehow it seemed wrong that men should be slaughtering each other with so little noise; there ought to be a grander sound, a slamming like thunder, perhaps, and flashes in the sky.

At last his curiosity overcame his caution.

It wasn't hard to slip out of the camp. But he had gone only a dozen paces when Ibn Zuhr caught him up. 'Arngrim told me to keep an eye on you.'

'I don't trust you, Moor.'

'I don't trust you either. So we're even.'

Cynewulf eyed him. 'Come, then.'

Retracing his tracks from the day when he had gone spying with Arngrim, he made for the high ground from which they had watched the Danish camp.

From here Cynewulf could see the battle laid out as if on a diagram. There was the King's party – he thought he recognised Alfred himself, his jewelled crown a pinprick of colour, his dragon ba

And between these two poles of command was the battle front. All Cynewulf could make out was a compressed mass of hundreds of men, pressed together beneath glittering swords and axes. At the centre of the mob was a kind of bloody froth, a line of bright crimson, where the swords stabbed and the axes swung. Cynewulf was astonished by the brightness of the blood, the quantity of it, and the almost neat way limbs were severed and torsos sliced through.

Pagans were much drawn to boundary places, river banks and ocean surfaces, places where one world touched another. That clash of shield walls was just such a boundary place, a boundary between death and life, where breathing men were stabbed and hewn to lifeless pulp.

Ibn Zuhr was analytical, dismissive. 'Only a few hundred men on each side. This would have been no more than an incident in the great battles of the past. The Caesars brought armies of tens of thousands to this island. And there is no tactic but to press and thrust. A thousand years ago Alexander the Great used cavalry to-'

Cynewulf didn't know what cavalry was, and didn't care. 'Shut up,' he snarled.

The Moor seemed startled by the priest's anger. But he said, 'We have seen all we can see. We should go.'

Cynewulf couldn't bear to look at the man. But he nodded, and the two of them withdrew.

XVII

Fighting down the slope of the ridge rather than up it was a slight advantage that became greater as the day wore on, as men fell, and those who survived became exhausted and weakened by blows and injuries. And so the English were steadily pressing the Danes back down the hill, back towards their camp, the skjaldborg intact but retreating step by step.

But the shield wall was a mill that ground up men. As warriors fell, each side poured in more and more bodies, living men to be processed to corpses. The English did outnumber the Danes, but once the cream of the English army was used up there would be only the low-quality levies left. If the skjaldborg did not break soon, Arngrim saw, the English would lose the battle simply by bleeding to death.

How was it to be broken? Even as he cut and stabbed and thrust, even as he felt his own strength drain with the blood he must be losing, Arngrim tried to think, just as the King had urged him to. If they couldn't batter their way through the Danes, what was to be done?

Then Egil reared up before him once more. The Beast of Cippanhamm had lost his helmet, and some lucky English blow had smashed his teeth, turning his mouth into a bloody pit lined with jagged stumps. But his eyes were wild. He was laughing.

And he recognised Arngrim.

In that instant Amgrim thought of Cynewulf and his prophecy. If not for the Menologium this battle might not be taking place at all, for Alfred might not have found the determination to wage it – and if not for the Menologium the Beast would not have the faith in his own invulnerability which must have carried him through battle after battle, to this field. They were here, Amgrim thought, both of them, positioned like counters on a game board, because of the Weaver, the sage of the furthest future. And yet they could die here.

Egil threw himself forward.

Their shields slammed. Arngrim was thrust back half a pace. Egil stepped back to drive again, but before the Dane could close Arngrim raised his shield and slammed its boss into Egil's face. Egil staggered, his nose a bloody ruin, and Arngrim had room to draw Ironsides from its scabbard on his back. But Egil came on again, spattering Arngrim with blood and spit and snot, and their shields clashed once more. It was almost with relief that Arngrim realised that he could give himself up to this elemental fight, let himself fall into the pit of darkness inside him.

But he must think. To break the Danish shield wall was more important than to sate himself in a private war with this animal of a man – and in a flash he saw how he could do it.

With a roar and a vast exertion he shoved Egil back once more. And the next time Egil came at him, rather than facing Egil's charge, he flung himself backwards. He clattered into the fyrdmen behind him and finished up on his back.

Egil, off balance and caught by surprise, ran a couple of steps forward and tumbled over. His huge strength had been holding this section of the Danes' wall together, and without his support the Danes around him slipped and fell. A length of the skjaldborg collapsed, battered Danish shields knocking against each other.

And the English, roaring, rushed into the gap like flies into a wound.

Arngrim's ploy had worked. Now all he needed was a grain of luck for himself, a splinter of time.

But his luck ran out. Egil was already on his feet, and standing over him. The blade of his axe flashed.

Arngrim had no time to raise his shield, no time to roll away. The iron cut through his mail shirt, between his belly and his groin, and buried itself deep in his gut. Pain slammed, and the world greyed.

Egil stood over him, still laughing from that ruin of a mouth. And he dragged at his axe. Arngrim could feel the blade slice through soft organs. And then it caught on something, perhaps his pelvis. More pain burst inside him.

But he still held Ironsides. Screaming, he swung his sword.

The heavy, faithful blade cut through Egil's right arm just below the shoulder, in a stroke as neat as a butcher's. Egil howled. His arm hanging by threads of gristle, he lost his grip on his axe. And Amgrim grabbed Egil's hand. As Egil stumbled back Arngrim twisted the hand with the last of his strength, so that the final bits of gristle snapped, and the severed arm fell across his belly.

The world swam away.